In 2001, Aer­o­s­mith’s Steven Tyler joined with Brit­ney Spears to sing “Walk This Way” at half­time of the Su­per Bowl. Now the duo is re­unit­ing — though not to per­form.

Along with Ozzy Os­bourne, Sting, and Dr. Dre, Tyler and Spears told the De­part­ment of Com­merce Monday that song­writers, not copy­right law, should de­term­ine who can re­mix or mash-up their mu­sic.

In the age of You­Tube, re­mixes have be­come an art form un­to them­self. To foster cre­ation in this area, the Pat­ent Of­fice’s Ju­ly 2013 copy­right re­view ex­plored cre­at­ing a com­puls­ory li­cense that would al­low any­one to use a song to re­mix or sample for a set fee.

Tyler, who led the ef­fort with the help of mu­sic in­dustry law­yer Dina LaPolt, said such a leg­al struc­ture would take away the artist’s power to de­term­ine how their mu­sic is used.

“Ap­prov­al is by far the most im­port­ant right that an artist pos­sesses,” LaPolt wrote. “If an artist does not want his or her mu­sic used in a cer­tain way, no amount of money will change his or her mind.”

Mu­sic artists are par­tic­u­larly con­cerned that their mu­sic could be aligned with a polit­ic­al or com­mer­cial mes­sage they do not sup­port. For ex­ample, the Eagle’s Joe Walsh—who also sent a let­ter op­pos­ing a com­puls­ory li­cense—took is­sue with Illinois Re­pub­lic­an Rep. Joe Walsh re­work­ing the lyr­ics to his song “Lead the Way” dur­ing the Con­gress­man’s 2010 cam­paign.

The task force’s of­fi­cial com­ment peri­od ended on Janu­ary 8, but the artists were gran­ted spe­cial per­mis­sion to sub­mit their com­ments late.

Copy­right laws are un­der­go­ing re­view in Con­gress as well, but mean­ing­ful le­gis­la­tion has not been in­tro­duced. The next step for the IPTF, which brings to­geth­er the U.S. Pat­ent and Trade­mark Of­fice and Na­tion­al Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions and In­form­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion, will be pre­par­ing a form­al re­com­mend­a­tion for Con­gress, though a timeline has not been set.

"The Senate passed a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill on Tuesday night, handing a significant victory to President Trump and senators who lobbied to advance the legislation before the end of the year. Senators voted 87-12 on the legislation, which merges a House-passed prison reform bill aimed at reducing recidivism with a handful of changes to sentencing laws and mandatory minimum prison sentences." The House aims to vote on the measure when it reconvenes later this week.

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Judge Delays Flynn Sentencing

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Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan "agreed Tuesday to postpone Michael Flynn’s sentencing after a hearing to decide the punishment for President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser went awry." Sullivan gave Flynn a chance to reconsider his decision to plead guilty, adding that he could not "guarantee a sentence without prison time, even after the special counsel’s office recommended that Flynn not be incarcerated. After a brief recess, Sullivan and prosecutors agreed to delay sentencing so that Flynn could "eke out the last modicum of cooperation."